Wednesday, March 25, 2020

"Harvard, Boasting $40 Billion Endowment, Lays Off Dining Hall Workers Due to Coronavirus"

Free Beacon:
University president Lawrence Bacow and his wife tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday. Bacow said he and his wife were tested Monday after experiencing symptoms Sunday and received results within 24 hours.

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Based on the local living wage standard, it would cost Harvard $710,000 to provide four weeks of full-time paid leave for all of its subcontracted dining employees. This represents 0.001 percent of Harvard's endowment.
Tyler Cowen writing for Bloomberg:
The real contributions of Harvard, MIT and Stanford to the world are not the food-service workers they hire.

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Harvard, Stanford, and MIT stay true to their missions not by regularly asking whether they ought to redistribute their endowments to starving people around the world.

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I am saying that their moral obligation to extend charity to those workers is not very strong.